In Ancient China Doctors Received Payment Only If They Managed To Cure A Patient
In ancient China, the doctor received his payment only if he managed to cure the patient. The results of medical interference needed to be stable and proved by the patient and his relatives. In fact, this tradition is an effective way of “insurance”. The doctor definitely put more zeal and effort into his or her work on the patient with these conditions.
Even more, the mere fact of a disease was a proof of the doctor’s poor performance. In every town or village, the curer carried out the duty of prevention rather than curing. Once a person became ill, the doctor did not receive any more payment. Therefore, the doctor was interested in strengthening and maintaining the health of their patients, and paid special attention to the prevention of diseases, which takes into account the special nature of the calendar. Today this ancient knowledge obtained “rebirth” and embodied in the new science called chronotherapy.
According to the modern science, and even our bodies everybody live by their internal biological clock, at different times of day and year lead and feel differently, and they are responsive to changes in the external world: day and night, the seasons, and other cyclic processes. That is why the same medicine taken at different times of day and in different seasons, can “behave” in the body in different ways. Proper timing for taking preventive or drug will not only enhance the effect, but can also reduce the dosage and side effects when taking potent drugs.
Ancient Chinese medicine with its observation and focus on health rather than on treatment of diseases, has revealed the minimum and maximum periods of activity of organs and systems of the body, they found practical application in the form of daily and seasonal recommendations (Parker, 90). This knowledge is based on 2 principles:
1. The most favorable time for the recovery of the body is the time of maximum activity when the body is on the rise forces. This includes both the seasonal and daily activity.
2. All preventive actions should be carried out during a minimum activity of organs and systems, i.e. when they are maximally attenuated.
Chinese doctors paid special attention to prevention of addictions of all sorts. The nature of addiction is explained by the mechanism of brain function, namely the brain stem, the limbic system and the cerebral cortex, which are responsible, respectively, for the basic life functions, perceiving and processing all sensory information, and the emotional reactions. Therefore, addiction damages the most vital parts of the brain, subordinating their operation.
To some extent the phenomenon of addiction is due to evolutionary matters. Not having any physical advantages over the fauna, the human beings were forced to find some other way to survive, some other competitive edge. This became the structure of the brain and its function – so complicated and unknown it hasn’t been studied fully even by now. But this edge also creates problems like addiction, it makes them possible. Especially young children and teenagers are affected, because more susceptible to addictive drugs than adults may be, and the influence of drugs on their brains can be very difficult to reverse (Pollan 180).
Views like these have already been expressed, starting from the early 1930th, but they could not be properly explained and proven, because at that time science hadn’t developed to the extent needed. For quite a long time, addictions of all times were attributes to the moral weakness and bad moral compass of a person, and only two decades ago the neurologists made a breakthrough and gave reasoning to the hypothesis that addiction is a mental disorder, a dysfunction of a brain. Moreover, this dysfunction has a permanent impact on a person’s brain, provoking relapse even after quite long periods of abstaining.
Works cited
Parker, M. & Smith, M.C. (2010). Nursing Theories and Nursing Practice (3rd ed.).
Pollan, Michael (2006). The Omnivores Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. NY Press, USA.
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